I do not know exactly when it begun. Yes it was in the year 2004 I remember X-Plane 6. A world nearly empty. In the x-Plane Forum I met a few guys who had made some buildings round airports. Airports. Yes there were thousands. I remember a default airport somewhere in the USA. Europe empty like in the Stone Age. I flew in this empty world with different planes. I was surprised how the followed my Joystick. I crossed the alps and the Himalaya. Or Africa. Laminar Research had covered the earth with patterns of different landscape types.

I do not know exactly when y made my first building. A hotel, I guess. Because there are many hotels on Mallorca, where I lived. I made hotels with a little program called ObjectBuilder. My hotels were cubes with white, brown, green, yellow walls and blue windows. With OverlayEditor I planted these Hotels near the coasts. And I saw: That is bloody shit. No life, sterile, boring. Into the trash with them! My career as a landscape builder ended before it begun.

Eva, a girlfriend had the Idea: Can we make photos of hotel facades and attach them to the walls? We made a few experiments and it was possible with Object Builder. A little bit tricky but it worked. I planted hotels with photographic walls. E voila! The landscspe began ti live. I made more and more hotels and other buildings. Jonathan Harris (Marginal) showed me how to work better with his OverlayEditor. The Eva and I made our first big building: The Cathedral of Palma de Mallorca. We made a lot of photos, did find the dimensions in brochures and worked a whole week. The first authentic building war ready. It is exact the cathedral you will find in all Mallorca Sceneries. It is not state of the art, but it reminds of the beginning of "Mallorca". One or two years later I published my first Mallorca Scenery. And became winner of the month in sceneries.

But I was not satisfied. Less than hundred buildings, I made, disappeared on the 3.600 square kilometers of this big island. Reality war another thing. So. If reality was not possible, why not make something against reality. Why not substitute those X-Plane patterns with something else? Artwork for example. I assembled abstract pictures made by my girlfriend Juliane and nearly abstract photos that I had made in South France. But how change the genuine landscape patterns. Another X-Planer helped me: Albert Laubi. We changed the patterns and saw a fantastic scenery. But only there, where the XP patterns had a lot of variations: Hills and Mountains. The alps and the Himalaya. Wide flat terrain showed endless repetitions of the same art pattern. As before with the X-Plane patterns. And the Cities? They hardly differed from the surrounding landscape. The Idea: I substituted the original City patterns with Photos of circuit boards. That war the solution. A really fantastic new world far from reality. I called my next scenery: "X-Plane in Wonderland" The echo was mixed: Much agreement and much enraged disapproval. I noticed that the most agreement came from female scenery builders.The time had not come for my Invention. That was it. I had my fun flying through X-Plane in Wonderland. Till now a few hotels have artwork on its roofs. Shall remember to this period.

But this scenery had no possibility for improvement. And with every XP Update the users hat to reinstall my art patterns. So ADIOS to "X-Plane in Wonderland".

I had to go the hard way with more and more buildings for my Mallorca scenery. I did it. But not straight. One of the very bad things in the X-Plane scenery till version 8 were streets and roads. Why not build a own road net on Mallorca. Why not let roads join cities and villages on this Island? To much work. I had time enough. I am pensioner. So I continued my struggle for more reality.

I know: The midpoint of every scenery is the airport. The airpot Palma de Mallorca has a lot of buildings, but I could only make photos from buildings visible for every passenger. I tried to get permission to make photos from buildings on the inner area. Ha. No chance. To big the fear of terrorists since 9/11. So I visited a newspaper on Mallorca. Maybe I could find alder photos taken before 9/11. And I fond them in the archive of the editorial department.

Yes. and the editors found me. Made a story about me and my scenery in "Mallorca Magazin". Few days later Herr Ahrens called me and invited me to a trip over the island with his Mooney. We started at LESB Son Bonet the former main airport of Mallorca - now airport for business and sport. Just airborne Herr Ahrens asked: "Sie möchten doch gern fliegen. Oder?" O yes I wanted. And so I flew his Money to Capdepera - where I live - and back. About half an hour reality. And I learned : When flying an airplane most of the reality lives in one's backside, where you feel, what the air makes with the plane. He - Herr Ahrens - landed. Not I.

Back from reality to simulation. With the certain insight, that flight simulation cannot substitute reality. Nevertheless I behaved as it could. Next great Challenge: Mallorca with Roads and streets. The older XP Versions had not generic roads or streets. The OSM chaos came later. About two years I built roads, highways over the Island and streets within the capital Palma de Mallorca. I made cities and villages and joined them with my road net. And the road net had crossings, roundabouts, bridges and tunnels. Yes, daveduck and I mede a tunnel through the Tramuntanas to Sóller. At the airport a pilot could rent a car - Landrover, Crysler or Lamborghini - and make excursions to Palme, Inca or - through the tunnel - to Sóller.

BUT: Laminar Reasearch published a new version of X-Plane with a new mesh and OSM roads and all my bridges, roundabouts, roads, highway became rubbish, junk. Away with it. No more villages, no more custom roads no Lamborgini with 250 km/h through the Sóller tunnel. No more Mallorca Scenery.

Really? No. A new version is a new challenge. With all the new tools and applications it should be possible, to give the scenery more reality. We had now a somehow correct road net, we could place objects over background pictures. Not on the whole Island, but more intensive on an area round the capital and the Palma Airport and on the beach of Palma to the well known El Arenal. And I could try to combine this with an terrain overlay made with Ortho Photos. That is the last version of Mallorca Scenery. And I think it's well done.